Last night I posted about how copyright of photographs of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key are owned by the New Zealand National party. In the post I assumed that the photos that were being claimed by National were taken by political staffers in the Prime Minister’s office.
However looking though the a New Zealand Herald’s photogallery of a John Key’s recent visit to Washington I noticed that the photos 5 and 6 in this gallery match these two photos on the “National Party” flickr page.
However the photo’s in the Herald are credited to “Tania Garry” who appears ( from a bit of googling) to be a career New Zealand diplomat currently posted to Washington.
So what is happening here? A New Zealand diplomat takes a photograph which is released to some news media (with full rights to publish it commercially I assume) but somehow the National Party is allowed to put it on their website/flickr under their own conditions?
So who owns the copyright for this photo? Who released a copy under what conditions and to who?
From my point of view it appears that a NZ diplomat takes a photo and then it’s made available to “friendly” news media for publication (but not the New Zealand public) before copyright is claimed by the National Party?
Like I said in my previous post, photos and other material like this should not be claimed by Political parties but should be released under a liberal license for use by anyone (which includes commercial use like newspapers).
